Well, maybe not quite yet, but here’s a roundup of some tools that are available that point to a cool future for multitouch musical instrument controllers.

Way back in November of 2008, we took a look at the state of innovative tactile controllers for music. At the time, the coolest cutting edge tools were mostly research projects, certainly not something you’d pick up at the local music store. Well, this is finally beginning to change. For professional work, and for about two grand, there’s the JazzMutant Lemur, which is probably beyond what a lot of musician/songwriters or dabblers need. And if you have the brains and can get your hands on the hardware, there’s the Töken multitouch screen running Emulator (video below). But the iPad – in spite of being an annoyingly closed platform – is coming into its own as a somewhat interesting tool as more sophisticated apps become available. And the overall cost of working with an iPad can’t be beat. After the initial purchase of the iPad itself, many of these apps – like MorphWiz, Pro Keys by BeepStreet, or the latest and probably coolest, Seline HD by Amidio Inc., are often less than ten bucks. For a more comprehensive roundup, both PCWorld and CreateDigitalMusic.com did features earlier this year. Below are a few videos that demonstrate some of the available tools.

If you can figure out what a Töken multitouch screen is, you can run Emulator and do this: